Steve Skojec

Top Gear may just be the best directed show on television. Charismatic hosts, phenomenal cinematography, and some of the coolest damned concepts for segments that I’ve ever seen. Anywhere.

Since I don’t have TV, I just watch some of the best bits on YouTube. This time, it’s all about the flippin’ sweetest car in the universe, the car made from pure unmitigated cool, the Bugatti Veyron. The challenge? Drag racing the newest European jet fighter, the Eurofighter Typhoon. (While it’s no F/A 22 Raptor, it’s no Cessna either.)

The outcome is irrelevant. It’s all about the competition. I will have one of these cars in heaven.

I’m happy to announce, after a long absence, that Hilary is back.

In case you were wondering if I could let it pass without a comment…I can’t.

Your friend and mine, the ex-vice president of the United States, that filmmaker of record, the humanitarian, private-jet-travelling, carbon-consuming activist on behalf of the environment, Al Gore, has (sniff) won the Nobel Peace Prize for his outstanding work to save mother earth from her rapacious human children.

To me, the news is an ironic coincidence, considering that my days in the early portion of this week, spent in a darkened room waiting for my eye to heal, were filled with the audiobook rendition of Michael Chrichton’s State of Fear.

The book itself is unwieldy and even boring at times. Chricton’s agenda shows through clearly in places where the narrative winds up threadbare, diminishing to little more than a flat-out (though much needed) assault by the author on the global warming fever sweeping this nation.

As a story, State of Fear falters, though it was interesting enough to keep me from falling into a boredom-induced coma as I studied the inside of my eyelids for days on end. But Chricton, who has received no small amount of criticism for his views of climate science as expressed therein, has done us all a service by trying to draw our attention to the men behind the green curtain.

In an author’s post script, Chricton indicts the politicized science of catastrophic climate change by comparing its mass-fervor and universal acceptance to a similar (and even more dangerous) theme from the early 20th century - eugenics:

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

I don’t mean global warming. I’m talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago.

Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California.

These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council. It was said that if Jesus were alive, he would have supported this effort.

All in all, the research, legislation and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected.

Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of theory were morally and criminally wrong. Ultimately, they led to the deaths of millions of people.

The theory was eugenics, and its history is so dreadful — and, to those who were caught up in it, so embarrassing — that it is now rarely discussed. But it is a story that should be well know to every citizen, so that its horrors are not repeated.

Chricton makes it clear that the dangers inherent in the consensus over global warming and eugenics are not of the same magnitude, but a lesson is there to be learned:

I am not arguing that global warming is the same as eugenics. But the similarities are not superficial. And I do claim that open and frank discussion of the data, and of the issues, is being suppressed. Leading scientific journals have taken strong editorial positions of the side of global warming, which, I argue, they have no business doing. Under the circumstances, any scientist who has doubts understands clearly that they will be wise to mute their expression.

One proof of this suppression is the fact that so many of the outspoken critics of global warming are retired professors. These individuals are not longer seeking grants, and no longer have to face colleagues whose grant applications and career advancement may be jeopardized by their criticisms.

In science, the old men are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise, counsel caution, and in the end are often right.

Climate change does seem to be occuring, and more and more data seems to be rising to the surface to demonstrate that the trend is in fact global, and skews toward warming. Though it’s probably only anecdotal, it was about 90 degrees here on Monday, despite the fact that we’re well into October. The water shortages being faced in my home town among numerous others are a testament to the heat and lack of precipitation. In Loudoun County Virginia, we’re 13 inches below normal for rainfall this year. It’s not insignificant, though it could just as easily be part of a natural cycle as part of some catastrophic global consequence of industrialization.

Which highlights the point - we simply don’t know enough. There’s a lot of fear-mongering out there on this issue, and from my vantage point as a trend-watcher it’s not going to go away any time soon. Eco-trends will only be pushed aside by economic ones, though the two will probably be increasingly linked over the course of time as policy change affects industry, consumption, and behavior.

If you haven’t read State of Fear, it’s worth a look, if only to get you thinking about this issue in a different light. Whatever side of the debate you’re on, I think it’s likely that you’ll find some of the points made within the story thought-provoking.

As for Al Gore…well, most people probably knew what the Nobel was worth when Arafat received it in 1994.

The Nobel Prize committee should be taken about as seriously as the U.N.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Verizon has “rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program. ”

In turning down the program, Verizon, one of the nation’s two largest wireless carriers, told Naral that it does not accept programs from any group “that seeks to promote an agenda or distribute content that, in its discretion, may be seen as controversial or unsavory to any of our users.” Naral provided copies of its communications with Verizon to The New York Times.

Considering the fact that I’m stringently pro-life, you would think that I would applaud this decision. And yet I find that it leaves me troubled.

Legally, Verizon should have the right to do this as a private entity. But I have this nagging feeling that in so doing, they set a precedent for other censorship of private messages, and that’s something I don’t like the sound of, because eventually, it will be the messages that matter to me.

NARAL’s program is opt-in only, not text message spam. Users who want to receive updates from them can do so by signing up. This is communication that I’d love to see disappear because it’s for an evil cause. I would not, however, trust a corporate entity like Verizon to make such a decision on who to censor and when. A pro-life update could just as easily be stifled by this rationale.

I view this as comparable to Verizon listening in on my phone calls and deciding whether what I’m saying is appropriate. I recognize that there is a difference in that NARAL’s program targets a large distribution list, but the fact that it’s opt-in rather than opt-out means that only those who have asked for the communication receive it.

This segues into the issue of net neutrality, something I’m an advocate of. The power of the Internet (and telecom networks) lies in the freedom they offer in the exchange of information. Restricted access, multi-level pricing structures, and censorship of private message correspondence by providers is not welcome.

There are of course exceptions. Criminal activity should be dealt with if detected. Some will likely argue that since abortion is a moral evil, it’s legal status as non-criminal is irrelevant and it should be treated for what it is. On a certain level, I agree with this assessment, but I become increasingly convinced that we have to be careful with these legal distinctions. While an immoral law is no law at all, the fact that the government sees abortion as legal means that speech about abortion is legal. In order to protect our own right to speak against abortion, it seems wise to grant that it has legal status while working fervently to change the law, and the thinking that is behind it.

To me, that means these messages should be allowed through.

Lately I’ve been giving more thought to these principles, particularly as I evaluate the legality of our actions as individuals or as a nation in relation to our moral position on various issues. We may, for example, morally and emotionally desire that the Constitution be amended to protect human life from conception. But we must, through an examination of jurisprudence, recognize that amending the Constitution without a grave reason weakens it as a whole and sets a precedent for changing it according to popular ideology.  Considering that the founding documents of this nation guarantee the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, the correct action to take is (as Ron Paul has attempted to do in Congress) define “life” as beginning at conception. Then the framework is preserved and only the application and understanding of the law is changed.

There’s an exchange that comes often to mind, and I’ve cited it elsewhere, and it’s the memorable one that takes place between Sir Thomas More and the young William Roper in A Man for All Seasons:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

That’s the title of this short piece in Wired. The story itself is one that I find myself feeling incredibly grateful for, despite only just learning of it this morning:

1983: A Soviet ballistics officer draws the right conclusion — that a satellite report indicating incoming U.S. nuclear missiles is, in fact, a false alarm — thereby averting a potential nuclear holocaust.

Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov was duty officer at Serpukhov-15, the secret bunker outside Moscow that monitored the Soviet Union’s early-warning satellite system, when the alarm bells went off shortly after midnight. One of the satellites signaled Moscow that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles at Russia.

Given the heightened tensions between the two countries — the alarm coincided with the beginning of provocative NATO military exercises and barely three weeks after the Russians shot down a South Korean airliner that had wandered into Soviet air space — Petrov could have been forgiven for believing the signal was accurate. The electronic maps flashing around him didn’t do anything to ease the stress of the moment.

I was five years old. I remember, as a kid, watching a commercial about the nuclear threat from Russia on the nightly news with my dad. A little girl sat near the window of her bedroom, singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” as one star, in particular, grew larger, and larger, and larger…

It was a scary idea. It was a plausible idea. And it looks like I owe Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov a debt of gratitude for keeping it from turning from an idea into a reality.